Wish Upon a Rei-sing Star

"When will you get a job and stop sitting around on your computer all day?" The shrill sound of his mother's hurtful words still ringing and stinging in his ears, the nerd retreated to the quiet and safety of his bedroom. Shaking back his greasy, unwashed hair, he curled up on his bed, hugging his favourite body pillow to calm himself.

"You would never keep being so mean to me like that, would you, Rei-chan?" he purred, casting his eyes around his room's decor lovingly. Really, the place was less like a bedroom and more like a shrine. Posters and wall scrolls covered almost every bit of wall space, and some were even stuck on the ceiling. Shelves and cases placed around were all packed full of figurines, statues and dolls. However, the most noticeable - and troubling - part of all this was that each and every one of these items depicted, albeit with a diverse array of clothing and poses, the exact same fictional person: a girl with light blue hair, usually with a melancholy expression. Even the body pillow currently being clutched had the same character on it. The jewel in this collection was obviously the huge, 1/2.5 scale statue that stood on the desk next to the computer where its owner spent most of his time, from which it surveyed the room like the idol of some secret cult.

After a while, the nerd calmed down enough to get up again. He was still upset with his mother, so he went out onto his room's small balcony to melodramatically contemplate the troubles he had to deal with in life. Why can't they understand that being happy is much more important than having to go and do pointless work for the sake of work like some brainwashed slave of capitalism? he lamented, gazing heavily into the stars of the late evening sky.

As he stared, lost in thought about the unfairness of it all, something caught his eye. A white trail of movement high in the sky... A shooting star! Suddenly remembering the old superstition, he spontaneously decided to make a wish. Fixing his eyes intently on the distant spark, he reached deep into his heart and wished fervently. I wish there could be a real Ayanami Rei! He felt an unexpected swell of excitement in the pit of his stomach, almost as if in response, and just for a moment dared to dream that his wish might come true. But then the feeling faded as suddenly as it had come, and the shooting star winked out into the darkness. He held his breath for a moment longer, then sighed and trudged back indoors, suddenly feeling very foolish. A mid-twenties man wishing on a star like a child... He shook his head and rubbed an acne spot on his face absently, deciding to go to bed now. If his blue-haired goddess couldn't be real in real life, maybe she could at least be real in his dreams.

Putting the brief personal embarrassment out of his mind, the nerd slept. By tomorrow, he will forget about it entirely.

---------- Many, Many Miles Far Away ----------

I flopped into one of the living-room chairs, feeling tired after having done a lot of vacuuming and dusting. My girlfriend Amy was out buying groceries and wouldn't be back for about another hour, so, with nothing else needing to be done, I decided to just relax for a while. I leaned over to open the window next to the seat, then lay back comfortably. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds from outside, of birds chirping and a light breeze blowing. The sunlight streaming in was warming, and I could smell the fresh air. It was unusual that I felt so good at a time like this.

Suitably relaxed, I let my thoughts wander. I was never able to fall asleep outside of a bed, but if I could, it probably would have happened now. Instead, I used the time to idly think about things I enjoyed. Without the pressure of having to do something at the same time, I was able to remember several things I had wanted to do but forgot about: games I meant to play, shows I meant to watch, some things I wanted to buy, and so on. Pleased to remember these things, I resolved to make notes of them later.

As it happened, my main passion in entertainment was for videogames. Though I didn't specifically discriminate, I usually ended up more drawn to Japanese-made games, as they often had more developed stories and more interesting visual design. I also liked anime and manga - at least in theory. In reality I never found time to really look into it and find any I would be particularly interested in. Amy was kind of the opposite of me, in that she loved anime and liked games, but still never quite got into the latter. In that way we sort of meshed neatly, and often managed to bring new things to the other's attention that wouldn't have been noticed otherwise.

With that thought, I went on to thinking about my own characters. I would often daydream up little stories of light-hearted adventure and romance with them, though nothing ever complete enough to actually put down on paper. I found it helped me sleep, and was also a nice way to pass a little time.

In all, I rested peacefully for something like twenty minutes of almost-sleep before I felt like it was time to do something. Intending to get a drink first, I stood up, but the moment I was on my feet I felt very dizzy. This wasn't especially unusual; if sitting still for a long time and then standing up suddenly, I would sometimes get that feeling, often with clouded vision and loss of balance for a moment; presumably because of blood flow or something. It had been particularly bad for a few years in my teens where it happened much more often; in some of those cases with a loss of equilibrium for a slightly longer time, I would intentionally flop face-down onto the floor to comically exaggerate the effect (though only when no-one was watching, so as not to cause alarm), since it made it feel quite natural to fall over. Maybe it was unconsciously remembering that old habit that made me find myself lying on the floor now. Then again, maybe it wasn't, as the effects weren't going away as they should be after a few seconds. I began to get worried as the dizziness showed no signs of subsiding. I tried to stand up to dial emergency just in case something was seriously wrong, but found I was unable. It felt as if all the strength had disappeared from my muscles, leaving me without the power to move my own weight. My eyes throbbed painfully with my heartbeat as blood flowed through them, making me close them automatically. Did that mean something was wrong with my blood pressure? I kept my eyes shut and tried to concentrate on keeping myself under control, breathing deeply, and keeping my mind working so I would hopefully stay conscious. Amy will be back soon, I thought hard to reassure myself. She'll be able to help. I tried to ignore my immediate next thought which added, if it isn't too late by then.

Then, with no warning, things got serious. Suddenly I was subjected to the excruciatingly unpleasant sensation of my very bones contracting like telescopic poles. In fact, not only were they shortening but becoming slightly slimmer as well, among subtler changes. Whatever was going on with my pelvis seemed particularly strange. The only reaction I was capable of making at this point was to gasp and cry out in extreme discomfort. Surprisingly, despite the horrible sensations of wrongness instinctively telling me I was suffering physical trauma, the event lasted only moments, then ceased as quickly as it began. The sensations I had experienced too were gone, leaving me feeling more or less exactly as I had before they began, with no lingering discomfort. I wondered if I had simply hallucinated it in some momentary fever dream. I was not yet aware that I had lost an entire foot in height from the ordeal, which had, despite my perception, lasted less than twenty seconds.

For a moment, I dared to wonder if it was over. Predictably, as soon as that thought came to me, it turned out that it had been merely a momentary reprieve. My body started changing again, but this time it was the soft tissues that were being affected. Although the changes were less drastic than before, it felt far more horrible somehow, as if something was reaching inside me and moving things around at will. I couldn't comprehend a lot of what was going on just by the sensation, but I was definitely aware of my muscle mass changing. My skin felt like it was crawling; maybe it literally was for once. I felt things shifting somewhat inside my torso, and some bones adjusting themselves again slightly to get into their final positions that they had been unable to safely achieve before. Conversely, I felt my muscles correcting themselves to match my new skeletal structure. All of this was like some inhuman torture to experience. More than once I involuntarily tried to scream, but was unable to find the breath, leading to a sort of pained wheeze instead.

The most violent modifications happened towards the end. There was a sudden squeezing feeling around my abdomen, while a little further down, something unidentifiable but deeply unpleasant was happening inside. Right afterwards, I felt a chill, and the feeling of my... reproductive organs retracting like it was very cold. But, they didn't stop anywhere sensible, but just kept going, past nothing and beyond. I felt the movement going all the way back and up, deep inside my body. Meanwhile, I felt the skin on my chest begin to stretch, with a weird filling sensation just behind.

Suddenly, I began to understand what was actually happening to me. Knowledge didn't ease the situation at all, however; in fact it only made me more confused and frightened. There had still been a faint hope in my mind that all of this was just some bizarre medical thing, maybe something that upset your nervous system and made you feel things that weren't happening. But this was now too specific for that. And now I knew that what was happening was blatantly impossible, I was not reassured in the slightest.

If nothing else, the main torment was coming to a close with one last nasty surprise. I was abruptly treated to the sensation of my face literally rearranging itself in both flesh and bone, making me realise pointlessly that my skull hadn't changed earlier with the rest of my bones. There was a sickening, audible pop from my nose as its large, straight shape was changed like it was being pushed by a machine. I felt a momentary sort of flowing feeling on my scalp and something tickled my ears. Then all was still once more.

It felt like a weight had been lifted from my chest. For a few moments, I simply lay, gasping for breath and grateful to be able to breathe properly again. I noticed that the dizziness with which all this had started had faded away, but I still felt too weak to move. I concentrated on trying not to hyperventilate, and on trying to ignore the tellingly higher-pitched sounds of my breathing as much as possible. I was too afraid of what I'd find to open my eyes just yet.

As it turned out, things weren't quite over. My clothes, a simple indoor outfit of white t-shirt and soft black pants, had started to cling to my skin. While I had sweated unpleasantly as a result of what had happened, that didn't seem to be the cause; actually, that moisture seemed to have disappeared completely at some point during my body's rearrangement. It was in fact the clothes themselves that were the cause, their formerly ordinary cotton fabric having now become like thick, sticky wet paint. Then they started to change further. My pants and shirt mingled together, becoming one mass, along with the socks and slippers I had on. The black of my pants and brown of the slippers swirled and diluted into the unchanging white of the shirt and socks, until it was all one big, white coating. I felt the stickiness spread up my neck a little, and down my bare arms all the way down to my hands and fingers, until they too were covered. It now looked as if I had just stepped out of a neck-deep pool of white paint.

While I had understood that my clothes changing as well wasn't too hard to swallow after everything else, I had expected some kind of, well, normal clothes. Instead I was just confused, as whatever was forming didn't seem to be any kind of normal outfit. The basic material that had formed had become smoother and no longer sticky. Details were appearing, including other colours that seemed to bloom on the pristine surface as if rising from somewhere below the white. I felt the material thicken in some places, mainly the shoulders, elbows, knees and soles of the feet. The entire thing tightened gently around my body, providing a light squeeze that was not uncomfortable, but did have the effect of making me far too aware at all times of the shape of my body, due to the feeling of touch everywhere. The pressure around my neck became far tighter, making it somewhat uncomfortable there, though the material touching it had become much softer which helped a little. A small hard part formed at the pit of my chest, followed by something lighter but still hard appearing on my back, which then seemed to extend two arms around each side of my body to stop short of meeting in the front. Something stuck out around each wrist. After that, nothing else changed. I waited for something else to happen, but nothing more seemed to be occurring.

Was it finally over? Though still feeling weak, I felt like I might be able to move now. I tried moving one arm, and though it felt like lead, it did move a bit. I also felt my heart and breathing beginning to calm somewhat, but I wondered how long that would last, because now I would have to actually get up, move around, and discover the full truth of what had just happened.

I sighed heavily, and reluctantly opened my eyes. They were damp and a bit blurry from being closed tightly for all this while, but things soon came into focus. The first thing I noticed was that my sight seemed normal; colours and definition were just like they always were. It seemed like a simple thing to be relieved by, but after something like this, I had been expecting the worst.
The next thing I noticed was my hands and arms, which were on the floor in front of my head, where they had naturally ended up when I had fallen prone what seemed like an eternity ago but was actually less than five minutes. They were covered completely in a white garment of some kind, that seemed slightly shiny and almost plasticky. The palms and fingers had a different black grippy surface. Around each wrist was an oddly angular part like a bracelet, with a large orange button on the left and right sides. A black part with a slightly different texture started a little way up the inside of each arm. I couldn't make any sense of what I was wearing. I did, however, notice that my hands and arms were very noticeably smaller and slimmer than normal.

Raising my head slightly to look more directly, I was distracted by something blue falling over the edge of my vision. It took a moment of absently jiggling my head to try and get rid of it before I realised it was in fact my own hair. Its unnatural colour had prevented me from easily making the connection. After noticing that, along with what I had seen of what I was wearing, something began to seem familiar to me, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

Now feeling good enough to try moving, I used my hands and feet to push myself up from the floor a bit. Although I had no problems doing so, it felt very foreign to me. The weighting of my body was completely different, and so was my muscle development. Being used to controlling a different body, my movements were very inaccurate. As I moved, I felt that I was still a little too shaky to risk trying to stand up fully, so instead I shifted myself back and my legs forward into a sitting position on the floor to rest a little more. Doing so also allowed me to look down at the rest of my new body. I was oddly afraid to look. It was strange because I already more or less knew what had generally happened, but somehow the prospect of actually seeing it properly seemed worse to me. At the same time, though, there was a sort of morbid curiosity too. It wasn't like I could just avoid seeing myself forever anyway, so I held my breath and looked.

The strange white thing I was wearing turned out to be some kind of skin-tight bodysuit that covered me from neck to toe; although I had been able to guess as much from the feel of it, I was still surprised to see something so outlandish in real life. Its form-fitting nature also served to conveniently make clear at a single glance what I had been afraid of. There was no mistaking the delicate round shapes on my chest, or the complete flatness between my legs, nor the wide roundedness of my hips, or my tiny, almost unhealthily thin waist and abdomen. There literally wasn't room for any ambiguity in this outfit. Actually, I still found myself taken aback somewhat. Although I had already resigned myself to the fact of having become female, I had somehow been automatically expecting to remain more like... well, like myself, with a similar age and body type and whatnot. Instead, I had apparently become a much younger, adolescent girl, at least from the proportions I could see from my own view.

With the most pressing issue put to rest for now, I found my attention being drawn by what I was wearing again, the strange feeling of familiarity niggling at me again. Although the suit was mostly white, there was a lot of detail on it, with orange stripes on the shoulders, what seemed to be a slightly lower layer of shinier black material that was slightly more flexible around the insides of the arms and shoulders, double black strips on both thighs, and some kind of round metallic piece in the pit of the chest. Above that, just below my collarbone, was printed the number "00". It had thin but tough soles on the feet for walking, and I could feel some kind of small plastic pack attached to the back, which for some reason had arms extending around my sides to make an almost complete circle, just below my... breasts. Although it didn't look it, it was somewhat padded on the inside and was actually quite comfortable. As I looked at what I was wearing, the feeling of recognition got stronger. I know I've seen this before, I thought. Noticing the blue hair at the periphery of my vision again, I almost remembered. Desperate to figure it out, I stood up quickly without thinking, intending to rush to the bathroom mirror. The wave of light-headed dizziness that swept over me told me it was a bad idea. I wobbled for a moment, spreading my legs to a more stable position, and breathed deeply for a few moments. Slowly the unsteadiness began to fade back, and I tried taking a few steps. It seemed okay now, though I wasn't exactly sure-footed. As the room stopped spinning, I suddenly noticed how much taller everything was, and realised I must have become quite shorter as well. Being in a completely different body like this... it could be years before I stop noticing differences, I mused.

I was able to walk more or less normally to the bathroom from there, though I was careful to move slowly. It seemed that the after-effects of my transformation were finally going away for good. As I clicked the light on, my heart was thumping again at what I might see. I had to know now, there was no getting away from it. I moved up and looked straight in the mirror, and was unable to suppress a gasp.

Looking back at me from the glass, I saw the face of a young girl, framed by thick, messy and unstyled short hair, of a pale blue colour that got slightly darker at the tips. Even her eyebrows were the same colour. Though there was something of a Japanese cast to her features, her skin was unusually pale, almost white, which combined with the hair made for an almost ghost-like visage. Her mouth was small and thin, and she had a small, slightly pointed nose and chin, with a vaguely triangular or heart-shaped face. I could also now see the two small pods perched on my head that matched the design of the suit, and the thin rigid wire supporting them that was hidden beneath my hair. All of these features were nothing, however, compared to the deep, crimson-red eyes that stared into mine. I just stood there, almost in a trance at what I was seeing, and the impossibility of it all. This unnatural, waif-like child couldn't possibly be me... and yet, it couldn't not be either, as evidenced when I dumbly put a hand to my face, and watched the girl before me do the same.

At some point my brain finally turned back on, and when it did, I recognised her... me... immediately. Rei Ayanami. My appearance and clothing were identical to Rei Ayanami; or at least, as identical as the real world could be to an animated character. I remembered watching the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series many years ago, and had truthfully forgotten most of the specific details of it, but I recalled it in general terms well enough. I hadn't been particularly bothered by it one way or the other, and had mostly just put it out of my mind. I thought I had a small figurine of Rei in a box of old anime figures from years ago that was stored somewhere and hadn't been touched for ages, but that was about it. Why would I have possibly become a real-life version of her? Never mind the question of how I could have been changed like this at all in the first place.

I kept staring in the mirror for a while. I had no idea what I was expecting to see, but I didn't have any other idea what to do either. My mind was whirling out of control with a thousand questions, but in the end, the girl in the mirror had no more answers than I did, so I finally left. Just feeling kind of numb, I just headed for my bedroom, hoping to lie down and maybe relax a bit. It still wasn't so easy to walk around, even though the dizzy and faint feelings had completely gone now. The problem I was actually having was completely different. Although my body's automatic functions like balance seemed to be working just fine, my conscious movements were completely messed up. Going from a slight but otherwise basically average 25-year-old man to a diminutive 14-year-old girl in an instant meant that all of my reflexes and motions, which were based on a particular weight distribution and centre of balance, were all wrong now, with no gradual in-between stages over time to naturally adjust. Still, I would get used to it. It's not like I would have a choice.

So, I flopped down on my back on the bed, but felt too tense to relax, and just ended up staring blankly at the ceiling. I was still too constantly aware of how different my body felt, and it was frustrating me. Then I sat up, and stared at myself some more. It felt so incredibly awkward, but I had to experiment. I knew I would have to get used to it sooner or later. So, I hesitantly touched different places on my body, feeling the different shapes and musculature of my limbs, the curve of my hips, and my flat tummy. I touched and cupped my breasts, blushing uncomfortably and feeling like a pervert even though it was my own body. I squeezed them gently, feeling their softness and slight resilience, and the strange sensations they gave. Even more awkwardly I ran my fingers between my legs, but I actually couldn't feel much through the suit. A sudden thought came to me at that point, making me forget about the specifics of my new shape for a moment. "How do you get out of this thing?" I said out loud without thinking, then shivered faintly at the foreign sound of my voice. Soft and quiet, and quite pleasant. I looked more closely at the suit for a moment, but didn't see any obvious way of opening it. The line down the centre of the abdomen didn't seem to be any kind of fastening. Oh well, it's not like it's an emergency... yet.

Now I just felt really worn out, maybe from my brain running in panic mode for however long it's been. I lay back on the bed again and forced myself to close my eyes. I tried to let my mind relax and wander, but it wasn't really working too well. Instead, I tried to think about something positive. I noticed how oddly light I felt now, which wasn't unpleasant at all. I let myself feel the comfortable bed, and the familiar atmosphere of my home. Even though my body is different, things are still the same, I told myself. The world around me still feels just the same. Things like the way I look are just superficial differences in the end. It was true, at least to me. I knew I was still the same inside, and that made me feel a lot more at ease.
I was just starting to finally calm down and relax a bit, when Amy came home.

-----

Enduring much shouting and screaming later, I had finally managed to calm her down and convince her who I was, through the traditional book method of telling her things about us that no-one else could know. I could tell she was only barely satisfied, though, and she still eyed me with great suspicion as we sat in the living room.
"So what happened again?"
"I just felt weak and sick all of a sudden, and fell down. I don't know how long it took. I thought I was going to die, but I just... changed."
"Mmm." She grunted, still not believing it. I leaned forward emphatically.
"Just look at me, I look exactly like her. It's too perfect to be fake."
"And how exactly can someone be suddenly transformed into an anime character like that? "
"Be sure and tell me when you find out, will you?" My temper was also starting to wear thin. My sense of identity had taken enough of a hit without the person I cared about most now believing I wasn't who I said I was. She didn't reply, but looked like she was within an inch of yelling yet another variation on "it's not possible" and restarting the whole argument again. But, she held her tongue for now, giving way to a strained silence.

After several moments of awkward dead air, I picked irritably at the split part on the chest of my suit. "I want to get out of this thing."
"Why don't you?"
"Because I don't know how. "
I tugged at the neck of the suit, being the only apparent opening, but it seemed solid and wouldn't give. Amy was quiet for another moment, then pointed out that in the show, the suits were operated by pressing the large buttons on the wrists. Nothing happened when I pressed one, but trying another resulted in a quiet puffing of air as it was allowed inside the suit. The pressure on my body ceased as the suit material relaxed, leaving it loose and baggy. With the air pressure equalised, I found that I could now remove the front of the neck piece, which combined with the looseness allowed enough of a hole to get out through.
"Okay then, I'm... going to go and change." Somehow I felt too nervous at the thought of her seeing my body like this. I stumbled awkwardly out of the room, trying not to trip on the floppy suit.

Safely shut away in my room again, I pulled the opening over my shoulders, then wriggled my arms free so I could pull the rest of the suit down and off completely. I couldn't avoid seeing my nude body as I did so. My skin was smooth and absolutely flawless, but what struck me most was how pale it was; something that hadn't had such an impact when I could only see my face in the mirror. It looked so unnatural to me, being so different from my normal skin tone. Curious again, I ran my hands slowly over my bare abdomen, finding my skin to be softer and somehow more sensitive than before. I gingerly touched my breasts, blushing a little again now that I was seeing them properly. Once more, it felt very different with skin-on-skin contact rather than through the suit. I squeezed them gently, then lightly touched the delicate nipples, marvelling at the feelings I was experiencing, and finding myself oddly fascinated with the concept of being female, now that it had happened. After a moment, though, I dropped my hands and shook my head roughly. I was still too shy to myself to really do this stuff like there was nothing strange about it. I knew I couldn't quite face looking at myself nude in a mirror yet, for instance, and I didn't feel like examining my nether regions too closely at this point either; although I did notice that apparently my blue hair was natural. I guess it would be really, it's just that it didn't make much sense in the real world. As I was quickly learning, that didn't seem to be much of a defence any more.

Trying to shake my mind off it all again, I opened up my wardrobe and took out some clothes, making sure to pick out ones that I always wore with each other, for Amy's benefit. They were much too long, of course, but it made me feel better to wear familiar things, and they were definitely more comfortable both physically and mentally than the skin-tight female plugsuit I had been wearing up until this point. I would have to buy new clothes to fit my new shape, I knew, which would present an adventure all of its own as I would have to face up to wearing girls' clothes from now on. But not today; not only was it too late to go out again today, I would need at least one good, solid night's sleep before I'd be in any state to do anything approaching normal things. For now, I needed to get my head together. I could have stayed there in my room like earlier, but I knew that to get through this without going insane I'd need to stay close to Amy, even as distrustful as she now was. I needed to talk to her some more. Running a hand through my unfamiliar hair, I began to trudge back to the living room.

----- Epilogue -----

It's strange how easily the human mind can adapt to unexpected change, when you think about it.

Even this. It was the craziest, most insane thing possibly imaginable, and felt like it had turned my entire life and existence upside-down and inside-out. And yet, in a surprisingly short time, it had gradually become the new normal, and life went on.

Actually, not all that much even changed, in spite of how it felt. I was still living with Amy, I hadn't been employed so there was no trouble there, and I went on doing the same things I had always done. I think that that familiarity really helped me, and prevented me from having any bad mental effects after the initial shock. In fact, once that shock had worn off, I didn't even mind it much at all. But then, I'd never really cared about my gender all that much to begin with; I'd imagine a more masculine guy would have been rather more unhappy about it. Thinking about it, after I rewatched Evangelion and read up a bit on some of the lore, my 'becoming' Rei actually kind of suited me. Her quietness and hidden emotions fit my own personality strangely well. I couldn't intentionally act like her very well, though.

Anyway, everything that I was worried about went much more easily than I'd expected. I took a new female name, and somehow managed to do enough fast-talking to get proper official documentation for myself sorted out without too much trouble. Meanwhile, my problems with Amy had also gone better than I had been afraid of. Although initially hostile, as time went on she noticed all the little things about me that were still the same. Things like my manner of speech, the way I would type or otherwise interact with things, and all the little mannerisms that we do without even realising. All these things about me that she knew better than I did myself. She knew that nobody could fake something so accurately and constantly, so she finally accepted that it really was me. After a while she even became interested in continuing our relationship, despite me being female now. I loved her and she loved me, and we were both happy again.

What else? Well, over time I learned a few interesting things about my new body. For one thing, mine was the same as a normal human's, while the 'real' Rei's was actually functionally the same but made of a different substance. It actually seemed that I was still technically in the same body as before, just modified rather than completely swapped or overwritten. It had been changed down to the genetics, but only the parts that were necessary to make me into a facsimile of Rei. Of course, since that meant almost every external and internal physical feature at the least, there wasn't really very much original material left; it was mostly just stuff that didn't affect anything physical at all. But it at least gave an explanation for why my mind and personality hadn't changed.
My light hair, red eyes and pale skin weren't from albinism, they were just naturally like that. In fact, I was now the one person in the entire world who had genes producing natural blue hair and red eyes. Even if I wasn't an albino, I pretty much had to act like one anyway because my skin was just that pale. Going out in the sun became a much bigger problem, and I fell foul of it many times in the beginning.
Even the plugsuit I had been 'given' had the same sort of "realistic replica" situation as my body. While it looked exactly right, and had the same vacuum-tight feature as the ones in the show, the other functions built into it were missing. Likewise, the headset, which was supposedly an important part of piloting in the show, was just an inert decorative item with no internal workings. Still, it all looked the part, and after a certain point Amy began to enjoy having me dress up in them for her, which was always embarrassing but kind of fun, too. Being with her felt very strange for a long time, since I had always been bigger and bulkier than her (not that that was saying much), but now I was the much smaller one. But in a way, it was very exciting too, and I think I might even like it better that way. It was very strange for me because she started treating me like a girl, and teasing me about it. I ended up blushing an awful lot. Deep down though, I secretly loved it when she would take the lead with me, which never really happened before. So as you can see, there's often good things to be found in things that seem bad.

Of course, the biggest mystery of all was never solved. We never did discover how or why I was transformed in the first place. Still, it's been long enough that I don't wonder so much any more. Like I said, strange things can become normal surprisingly fast, and then you end up stopping thinking about them even if you don't mean to.
What the experience taught me? I guess I'd say it taught me that life is a lot stranger than the world thinks it is. You're just going along, living your boring life, and then something literally impossible happens. It made me think about a lot of things, including wondering how many other "impossible" things have actually happened. When people say that nobody knows what tomorrow brings, they aren't kidding.

Actually, now that I think about it, there's one other strange thing I never figured out, even though it's really insignificant. Although my eyesight turned out slightly improved by my transformation, my perception of light and things seems exactly the same. But whenever I look into the night sky, the stars seem much brighter to me. It's no different for anyone else who looks, but for me they're brighter than they've ever been. I wonder why that is?